[Footnote 1: _Histoire de la Martinique, depuis la colonization jusqu'en_ 1815. Par M. Sidney Daney, Membre du Conseil Colonial de la Martinique. Fort-Royal: 1844. See vol. iv, p. 234.] [Footnote 2: Vol. H, pp. 285, 286.] V But though the old order of creole life remains almost unchanged, that life has shrunk into much smaller channels, and has undergone many modifications. The wealth and indolent luxury of the eighteenth century have become memories. The influence of the race upon home politics has totally ceased. The race itself is rapidly disappearing from the islands. Except among the few survivors of the old régime you may now seek in vain for that proud, fine type of valiant and vigorous manhood, once the honor of colonial France. With the abolition of slavery and the introduction of universal suffrage, the new social conditions became almost unbearable for the formerly dominant class,--with its intense conservatism. Naturally the men of strong individuality suffered most in the hopeless war of race prejudice and race politics provoked by a too speedy conferring of political rights upon a population of slaves; and the more energetic whites found themselves forced to emigrate elsewhere. Those powerful characters who had given the old creole life all its dignity and stability vanished from the scene; and the remnant of the whites softened down into that condition of dull, inert, flaccid existence which is their portion to-day. The social conditions of the time of the monarchy have been, indeed, almost reversed: the dark population, multiplying with wonderful rapidity ever since emancipation, is crowding the white population out of the islands; and the former slave race is now politically the dominant one. It seems more than possible that the white creole race will have disappeared from all the French West Indies within a few more generations,--certainly from Martinique.